Scientology and the Emerald Isle, Baghdad-by-the-Bay, and More in Our Thursday Stats Roundup

Mike Rinder, the former Church of Scientology spokesman, appeared on Irish national television last night as he prepares to take part in a debate about Scientology today.

We'll look at Rinder's Dublin TV performance and more as we round up this week's high and low marks for the church.

Every Thursday at 2 pm, Scientology's "orgs" collect their weekly stats to judge how things are going -- and we do the same here every Thursday afternoon at Runnin' Scared. So join us as we examine the church's week here on "STATurday"!

Rinder's visit to Ireland comes just a couple of months after we relayed the news that Scientology appears to be failing fast in that country, with revenues dropping 60 percent over the last couple of years.

And now, Rinder has been given a national platform to talk about the abuses of his old boss -- church leader David Miscavige -- and to talk about how the church continually follows and harasses him because he dares to criticize the organization publicly.

But we were also intrigued to see the show's host ask Rinder about how he still finds value in L. Ron Hubbard's "tech." As we've written many times before, Rinder and Marty Rathbun are attempting to bring out of the church longtime members who may be fed up with Miscavige's leadership, but who aren't ready to leave everything about Scientology behind. Which explains the headline on Rathbun's blog post this morning about Rinder's Irish television appearance: "Scientology's New International Spokesman."

Thursday's Stats: Upstat or Downstat? While anons and other critics might rankle at Rinder's pitch about the positive aspects of Scientology, anything that makes the indie movement smile is going to rub David Miscavige raw. But what really stood out to me in this episode is how the host made Scientology's official response to Rinder sound so ridiculous. The church's PR, at the moment, seems hopelessly out of touch. Rinder's appearance, there is no doubt, was a huge downstat for the church.

Story #2: Taunting in San Francisco

At our sister paper, SF Weekly, Lauren Smiley has been keeping watch on the fascinating story of a Scientologist who is feeding information about the San Francisco "org" to members of Anonymous, who picket the org regularly. From the beginning, there was some question about the authenticity of the messages coming from the supposed Scientologist, who calls him or herself "EthicsTrouble." But we asked our own experts about the internal church documents the person was smuggling out, and were told they appear to be genuine.

Well, after several weeks of silence, EthicsTrouble suddenly showed up again, this time in the form of a long, taunting jab at her fellow Scientologists. "I have proven your inability to just find one mole," EthicsTrouble writes. "I did this because I saw no other way to get to you. To get you thinking, looking, questioning. Its time for us to see we made a mistake."

Thursday's Stats: Upstat or Downstat? This may surprise some readers, but I have to say, this is the first communication from EthicsTrouble that strikes me as inauthentic. The sentiment is all wrong for a longtime Scientologist, even one coming out of the church. While the documents that have been smuggled out of the org seem genuine, this latest salvo from EthicsTrouble has only made me more wary of a hoax. For that reason, I'm going to have to give this a slight upstat for the church this week.

Story #3: Twin Cities Goes Ideal

We've been covering the "Ideal Org" push for some time now, as church leader David Miscavige replaces regular orgs around the country with new, larger, more lavish facilities, often in historic buildings. Over the weekend, the newest of the Ideal Orgs opened in St. Paul, and received some (fairly enturbulated) press there.

"Once upon a time, a science fiction author invented his own religion," begins an article about the new facility in the Pioneer Press by Frederick Melo. (Heh.) But perhaps the best moment in the piece is when church spokeswoman Erin Banks described the new org as "dinosaur-sized." (What was that we were saying about the church's boneheaded PR?)

Thursday's Stats: Upstat or Downstat? With dwindling membership, this push for expensive new buildings makes no sense whatsoever, and even a shiny new building opening up can't escape the creepy vibe in the local press. So, even with this push for positive PR, we'd have to give this a slight downstat for the church.

Story #4: Wise Beard Man Smeared Again!

Mark Bunker is reporting that he's been slimed at Scientology's puppet attack site, the "Mark 'Marty' Rathbun Blog" (which actually targets Rathbun, and is not written by him).

"It has been years since I last had a Dead Agent page about me on Religious Freedom Watch but tonight I discovered that an Anti-Marty blog has a very amusing write up about me," Bunker writes. He then quotes from the attack site, and says what really amused him was that the site used a photo of him making a funny face -- which he himself had taken.

But we noticed something else in the dumb attack on Bunker:

He has specialized in attacking LRH and ridiculing the Scientology scriptures, going so far as to publish any copies of upper level materials he could get on the Internet.

Do you see what the attacker did there? He or she just acknowledged the authenticity of the upper-level materials that Bunker (and many others) have posted to the Internet, exposing Scientology's weird (and expensive) beliefs. Seriously, who is the church paying to write this stuff?

Thursday's Stats: Upstat or Downstat? Wow. Yet another disaster of bad PR. A clear downstat for a church that can't seem to understand that a man like Bunker, who has a great sense of humor, can't possibly be harmed by posting funny photos that he himself took.

Story #5: Scientology vs. South Park

Finally, we wanted to mention our own ongoing coverage of Scientology's 2006 retaliatory investigation of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and their friends and employees. We've posted four stories since Marty Rathbun first leaked news of the investigation Sunday morning. (1. Rathbun's leak. 2. Our own OSA document leak showing the extent of the spying. 3. Lloyd Kaufman confirms that he was pumped for info by Scientologist Eric Sherman. 4. Mark Ebner reminds us that he too was investigated by OSA for working on the South Park episode.) We expect several more stories will be coming.

These stories have been among the most-read we've ever published on Scientology, and news of the creepy South Park operation went around the globe as it was picked up by dozens of other news organizations.

Thursday's Stats: Upstat or Downstat? This may be Scientology's biggest media downstat in a long time. The church looks creepy and intolerant, and a new audience will begin to understand what kind of methods are standard Scientology procedure with perceived enemies.

Overall, not a good week for the church of Scientology. Is that what Miscavige's orgs will tell him today at 2 pm? Commenters?

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I'm glad that Mike Rinder said that the "violence" he witnessed in the Church was not so serious as to get someone with scratches or something on that order.Oppss...meanwhile in their Texas cult, he and his best buddy Rathbun something different happens;tinyurl DOT com/6xts6xq

Not sure they've ever denied the authenticity of the docs people like Arnie Lerma began posting 20 years ago. When the CoS showed up at my door and demanded the docs, they seemed pretty pretty serious about it, and they did file suit to get them back. Plus confiscated all of Arnie's computers.

Re Rinder being the new spokesman and still clinging to the CoS fantasies? They're all whack jobs. Freaks and geeks, the whole lot of them. Many (not all) ex-CoS and current and "indies."

And there must have been something about CoS and trash collections back in 2006: same year they hit my house.

HOW ironic! The sci-fi money-grabbing mock-religion is being undone by the celebrity positioning exposure it wanted to use to expand itself! 1 inept actor and 1 cartoon totally relate how absurdly insane IT is without having to go out of their way.Hey scions, is it because the world is full of SP's, or maybe you are now getting the motivators for all your overts? Live by lies, die by lies. Time to take an honest look at the leadership who burned Ron;s books and fully violated KSW right in front of your face And you didn't take action to stop him. Better get out the ethic's formulas before you go down with him, eh? It's an honest mistake, you trusted when you shouldn't have....

I am glad Mike Rinder is out of the Church of Scientology, however from watching that video I can tell he is still brainwashed. He spoke about Scientologists being happier. Are you f...ing kidding me? I am not a scientologist nor do I personally know one, but from all of the videos I have seen on the internet, happy is the last word I would use to describe them!

Erin Banks is the spokewoman for the church of Scientology? What a joke! She is married to Nick Banks, the son of one of the rich Australians. Nick was a heavy drug addict whose got "saved" by the church and then forced to join the Sea org with his wife Erin.David Miscavige has complete control of Banks family.

"He or she just acknowledged the authenticity of the upper-level materials that Bunker (and many others) have posted to the Internet, exposing Scientology's weird (and expensive) beliefs. Seriously, who is the church paying to write this stuff?"

By making this degree of an admission has one upside. To the newbie Scientologist who has not yet looked on the internet, it can have the old intended self muzzling effect, which is to keep the faithful from reading anything that might be the "secrets" for all the bad reasons, like it will mess up their "cases" and make it harder for them to progress up the Hubbard "Bridge to Total Freedom."

Even when I was in (1975-2003) we were told certain newspaper articles, the LA Times series in particular, was NOT to be read, and we who had NOT yet studied the secret scriptures, were told that it would "mess up our cases" if we did.

One fellow staffer did read the LA Times articles, and he pretended for years that it "messed up his case" and when he'd have mental meltdowns, he'd claim it had to do with what he read in the newspapers.

So, there is this whole false mental damage syndrome that some members will even contribute to the false claims that the Xenu story causes some kinds of mental imbalance and bad mental reactions.

And they have for years, unofficially, internally, told us NOT to read this or that article, which had the Xenu story in it.

So the Xenu story and tying it together with what the members ARE allowed to speak about, namely the "Wall of Fire", which Hubbard himself talks about the Wall of Fire, to put two and two together, and tell Scientologists that Xenu CAUSED the Wall of Fire, is a good deed!

What people don't tend to explain, when people are asked to tell what the secret beliefs are, is to put it all together simply.

Simply, Xenu caused the Wall of Fire which was the hydrogen bombing of earth's volcanoes, 75 million years ago, and around those volcanoes were stacked billions of humanoids brought here from all planets in this part of the galaxy. All the murdered alien humanoids' souls were then implanted for 36 and 1/2 days, also by Xenu, and they were given the famous Hubbard R6 implants (the false ideas about everything). Those dead and implanted souls have roamed earth ever since, and they infest each new baby born, and these dead implanted alien souls can only be gotten rid of using L. Ron Hubbard's "upper levels" pseudo-psychotherapy exorcism.

"Upper Levels" Scientology is high volume exorcism, and it still takes years to get all of one's dead alien souls OFF of oneself, using Hubbard's "upper levels" tech (levels 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are the high volume exorcism levels of Hubbard's "Bridge to Total Freedom".

I think you got it right: "The church looks creepy and intolerant, and a new audience will begin to understand what kind of methods are standard Scientology procedure with perceived enemies."

And, I might add, that this "new audience" includes some "inside" the church koolaide drinkers who are totally unaware of these nasty tactics. The news about the attack on South Park authors will flow into the insulated and cloistered world of Scientology. FYI, South Park is loved by everyone of all my Scientology friends. Brilliant satirical comedy. Just Brilliant. With a capital B..

Check out Alexa dot com. Search this "markrathbunblog" dot com and scientology dot org and Marty's site, markrathbun dot wordpress dot com. Marty's site is now getting twice the hits as the other 2 combined. Another downstat for Co$.

Scientology does not seek out celebrities?? Nothing could be further from the truth, celebrites are very useful in giving the cult some badly needed credibility to say nothing of their ability to recruit new members. Once they are in they are taught how to peddle the party line to the media. I here in ftont of me the "Celebrity Media Handling Checksheet, Executive Directive, 24 June 1977." It is five pages long on legal sized paper. This is an exhaustive directive that leaves little to chance, There are books and other directives to read, sample PR pieces to write, clay demo work to be done, training drills and dissemination drills and so on. "Purpose: To make celebrities into experts in handling media, so with ARC they can effectively cause public relations actions that will help their careers, and get their good works well publicized and be bigger opinion leaders, and mold public opinion and so be in a better position to get LRH, Scientology and Dianetics well publicized and LRH's technology widely used."

Not surprised to watch Mike Rinder lie & spin & manipulate the interview. If you take note of his answers and observe his gesturing at questions he is not comfortable with, his responses are very controlled. He remarks he was once the "International Spokesman for Scientology" not the "International Director of OSA". He comments about his being followed & harassed since leaving the cult, negating that as head of OSA, he aggressively coordinated & implemented such hurtful & damaging actions against others for decades.He claims not to have any "secrets" on Tom Cruise. Seriously? He also claims the cult doesn't search out celebrities to join the cult, rather they join because they find value in the tech. His claim is contradicted by internal dox written by LRH on how to go after celebrities.

Mike Rinder does have a way with words. He did a televised interview with attorney Elliot Abelson in early 1997. That interview, more than any other single factor, was the cause of my involvement against Scientology.

At that time I had been to a just one or two protests over the death of Lisa McPherson and I was minded to say that I "had done my part, let others do theirs." But my thinking changed in a hurry when I heard the outrageous lies of these two men when talking about McPherson's death. Their utter disdain for the truth coupled with their complete and total arrogance soon hardened my heart against the cult. I found the smugness of Mike Rinder intolerable. At that point I was all in. So yes, as a spokesman for either Scientology or Martyology, Mike Rinder is just the man you want out there in front.

Re: Rinder. When is that man going to finally figure out that he's actually gay. I mean really.

Rinder continues to leave the Scn Kool-Aid IV drip in his arm, but I'm still glad he's doing what he's doing. Sure I want more, but this guy is major damaged from all those cult years and I'm happy with his progress even if I wish it were faster.

Re: Ethics Trouble. This is my first public statement about him/her. I'm glad you brought up the possibility that this could be a hoax. I never believed the full story. Ya there's dox but dox aren't that hard to get these days. There a few brave souls that continue to be "on lines" and still quietly pass info to critics. I did it for a few years. I used to pass dox on to Scn critics and they would post them and make up a story or tell NO story just post them.

I think ET is a troll made up of two or the people working together to get a rise out of Scn and make them even more paranoid than they already are.

Irish "Pete" did a good job in the first part of the video. Could have had him on for 30 minutes. Rinder is less wooden than when he was in the cult, but two things I would catch him on:

1. David Miscavige is not the ONLY person who knows secrets about Tom Cruise. Marty Rathbun does too, having audited Cruise. Cruise's other auditors do too. Also, Marty knows what he told Cruise at the time Miscavige called Marty in to "rescue" Cruise from drifting away from the Church after Cruise had his WTF Xenu moment, and hadn't been active for months.

2. There was no special recruitment of celebrities? Really Mike! 1955 Project Celebrity, and all the people after that who were tasked with targeting and recruiting specific celebrities, and celebrities and their celebrity friends in general. Keep those "acceptable truths" coming Mike, to keep L. Ron's holy BS holy.

Unless David Miscavige uses some kind of Scilon Ninja tech for hitting people without bruising, it seems remarkable that none of the people he's hit, strangled or pushed up against the wall, haven't had a bruise. Maybe Mike should focus on Miscavige's verbal abuse, the brand of which is uniquely non-ecclesiastical.

Patty Pieniadz (Patty Moher) once gave a talk at which she presented a video of David Miscavige boasting about the number of column inches of press that Scientology's anti-psychiatry campaign was raking up. It would be interesting to know if Miscavige tracks the column inches of negative press about Scientology. That's one statistic that just keeps rising.

The South Park story is a HUGE downstat. Just a glance to the right of the screen shows that the posts on it represent three of the top five stories on this blog right now. It got picked up by Gawker, HuffPo, Reuters, The Independent, the Washington Post, etc., etc. (And Pouw's responses to those articles are worse for the Church than the articles themselves.) I'm still getting Google alerts about it, days after it broke. Lots of my non-Scn-watcher friends are interested in this story.

The South Park guys are beloved by a lot of people, and now Scientology will forever be remembered as the "church" that went through their garbage.

Is it me or is Miscavige shrinking along along his 'church'? Looking at pictures from the eighties, I'm sure he used to be taller. Being photoed next to Tom Cruise aside, do lulz stunt your growth like second hand smoke?

Tony, you touched on what seems to be Co$ problem. LRH was a scamster. When they call their attackers liars, it reminds us of where they learned their lying (especially when they did thid lying while working for Co$). When they admit the attacks are authentic, that proves that they are liars. Its win/win for the critics.

Many companies employ celebrities to endorse theirproducts. Scientology is no different,other than how they go about it. In Hollywood,scientology as an entire edifice devoted to the gathering and grooming ofcelebrities to their bosom. Its purposeis cleared stated in its title: The Celebrity Centre.

What I don’t understand is why Rinder would lie about it, orto be more accurate, dissemble? He hasto know there are LRH documents readily available online, as are 1sthand stories relating how SO clay demo elaborate and Machiavellian schemes toinfiltrate the lives of scientology-selected celebrities, aka Targets, with thegoal of bringing them into the church as members.

Huh? Go to 14:00. I see Mike saying that whilst there IS a recruitment campaign, the reason celebs become interested in the Co$ has more to do with how they can use particular aspects of the subject to help improve themselves as artists.

Absolutely. It also took the interviewer asking twice if he ever beat anyone for him to be honest. His first answer blamed Miscavige and the culture of violence. His second answer (when she repeated the question since he hadn't answered it) directly admitted to it.

Rinder may be out, but the Scientology poison isn't yet fully out of him if he is still equivocating that easily.

I agree with Patty. One thing is that it is highly unlikely that any staff member would ever throw stat graphs in the garbage for 2 reasons.

1) They know not to and know that anything like that needs to be shredded. The C of S is very shred savvy and has been for years. The idea to shred would not have come after that leak.

2) Orgs are often so low on supplies that they will use the other side of old graphs for scratch paper.

It is also highly unlikely that it would take this long to find the person out. If there was someone inside that could fake it that well with the other staff members, IMO that person was not ever really part of the group in the way that the rest are and that person would be obvious. Or, if that person was that able to be so brazenly pushing the envelope and scoffing at the staff's inability to spot him/her then that person isn't the kind of person who would be "trying to get through" to them or even care about helping them to see that they "made a mistake". Also, that statement, "We made a mistake" is not something that would be said either. I would be something like, "I want you to see that management is not following LRH policy" or something along those indoctrinated lines.

It can't serve the "five state area". Look at a map--the states that border Minnesota are a long drive to St. Paul. Its not like Boston or NY, where there are 5 states within a 100 mile radius. No one will drive from Des Moines to St. Paul on a regular basis. If this is all they have to serve Minnesota and 4 other states, the stats must be pretty low.

Another "favorite part" of mine is that before you even walk into the new Org and get hooked up to the Orgatron you can go on the Internet and read the experiences of hundreds of former members, and find out what it it really about, instead of having to trust some zombie who is trained to find your ruin.

"Unless David Miscavige uses some kind of Scilon Ninja tech for hitting people without bruising, it seems remarkable that none of the people he's hit, strangled or pushed up against the wall, haven't had a bruise."

Rather than "remarkable" I would say "incredible." Was Tommy Davis' famous shiner self-inflicted? Gimme a break, Mike.

Kosher or not - the clams in the SF org are REALLY mad when they see the I LOVE ETHICSTROUBLE sign that is used there in recent demonstrations. Even if it is a fake, it has caused a lot of friction in an already paranoid "org" and as far as tactics goes, is far too artful to be a $cientology endeavor so my money is on a cheeky Anon sowing dissent among the ranks of bored and lonely clams.

Sorry, you're getting Margaret-like in the extent to which you will defend Scilons and Hubbard-cuckoo, and its supporters.

Rinder says:

"It doesn't REALLY have to do with the fact there that there has been some massive campaign to recruit celebrities."

Your reasoning might stick if he said "a massive" instead of "some massive." Perhaps he misspoke. Saying "some" negated any meaning that the addition of the word "fact" might establish, and his tone of voice made it sound like he was dismissing the idea as fiction. Also, he doesn't address that at all, but proceeds to stump hard for the benefits of Hubbardry for actors.

Rinder sounds gay because of his use of intensifiers, not that all gay people do that.

Also, REALLY, the number of celebrities has A LOT to do with the campaign, including the special buildings to cater to them.

Rinder once said that the only lie he told during his time as spokescreature, was that Miscavige didn't beat him. Sciloontology has turned him into a compulsive liar, about Sciloontology anyway. It tends to do that to people, turns them into mini-Hubbards.

The reason celebrities "give it a go" is that they feel pressure and excitement from friends, the propaganda or buzz, the hope of self-improvement, confidence and career success. They want every edge they can get, to make it in the business and life. People buy into that promise, and it makes them feel good to be investing in it, trusting it, thinking they are also trusting themselves, and getting what they pay for. And belonging to a group.

It is like Astra Woodcraft thinking she had to save the planet, before it is too late, even though she was enslaved in the Sea Org machinery, deprived of the childhood and education she deserved. That was the hook/product for her, sacrificing to save the planet.

Was she really saving the planet?

This was designed and planned, by Hubbard. It is like when Nancy Many explained how she would sit in the audience of newbies hearing a free intro lecture on Sciloontology, and generate enthusiasm. It is contagious. Hubbard would justify this kind of thing.

In relation to what Rinder said, I think Sciloontology probably gives SOME people self esteem. Brings them out of their shell, and makes them better at selling themselves or a product. It helps some people to believe they are enlightened superior beings, with "super powers" and attached body thetans, and vastly superior to the lowly wog. But, is it really honest? Will that work to save the whole planet?

Scientology loads on too much self-deception and lies. That works for some people, but it makes for a frightening, controlling and fascist system, if they were to ever control government, the way Hubbard planned.

Celebrities (or other rich people) are usually better equipped to sustain the financial losses. Tom Cruise or Jason Beghe don't have to look back with extreme regret at spending money on Xenu, instead of getting a college education.

Well, not to go off into a whole side issue, I think it is a complex of things. I think it is love bombing, and people catering to you, even down to building you a meadow of wild flowers to romp in and giving you ready made servants in some cases. Many celebs are at base insecure and seeking affirmation so this really plays into that.

I accept that there can be some things that are appealing such as the old comm course. The other thing is that when you get right down to it there really aren't that many celeb. Many passed through, but didn't stay. So if 98% passed through it and 2% stayed, does that mean it has power? Well, maybe, for the two percent that stayed. But if you were buying it like you buy a car, sure as shooting, you'd look at why the 98% left before you bought the car.

I don't doubt that efforts are made to bring celebs into the fold but the fundamental reason they actually give it a go is because of what the subject can do for them. Makes sense, no? That is the point I saw Mike trying to make. Maybe I'm wrong, but hey ho.

The Co$ can try and recruit/entrap people as hard as they please but they cannot do shit without a product/hook that interests people.

Yep! Tommy "The Weasel" Davis said one time, "Good news, bad" news, it doesn't matter because it floods our orgs with people." Um, yeah. Just like we've grown more in the last year than the last 5 years and more in the last 5 years than the last 5 decades..

I mean, the actual column inches number they use at events is credible -- there are a lot of column inches in the world, and Scientology does get a lot of press, especially if they count articles about celebs that mention Scn -- but absolutely not credible if they're only counting positive stories.

They always say that any publicity makes people curious about Scn, which is true. But people are also curious about serial murderers and plane crashes; that doesn't make them real eager to experience those phenomena.

These people are friends, with the functioning parts of their minds. EthicsTrouble wants truth, and friends "out", but doesn't want to hurt them personally, just to expose Co$ lies. Some of these guys have given a lot of their lives to something they believe in, have been really lied to on a contining basis, and don't have much in the way of marketable skills.